Between Brothers (by DBird)

Summary: After being bushwhacked and left for dead, Adam and Joe find that some things are best kept between brothers.  Rated: T. WC 9200

 

                                                   Between Brothers

 

 

It hurt, but Joe made himself open his eyes anyway. The rush of light through the trees was so bright, it could have impaled him if that sort of thing was possible. He never knew light could be violent like it took pleasure in pain. Joe wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. He was lying in a pool of blood.

“Adam,” he called out.

His voice didn’t sound right any more. It was thin, like it had been wearing away while he was sleeping.

“Adam, are you here?”

On an overhead branch, a squirrel scattered at his voice, kicking bark in Joe’s face. There was dirt in his mouth. He spit some of it out, blood too. One of his teeth was chipped, and his tongue was cutting on the edge of it. He could feel confusion falling over him like rain. Was it raining? The ground was wet and cold, and it made him forget what he had been about to remember.Adam. His brother’s name was the only word he could get his mind around. Joe remembered Adam in the middle of all his confusion, remembered the sound of his brother yelling, before his world was knocked out in a salvo of pain. He was casting out wildly for memories about what had happened, and Adam’s name was all he could come up with. But it was enough. Joe shouted his brother’s name again, this time louder than the first time. He was starting to panic.

Where was he anyway? Joe tried sitting up and groaned instead. He was in pain. He was numb. Everything was a contradiction, and he couldn’t make sense of it. Why was he lying on a bed of wet pine needles, blinded by the sunlight, soaking in blood that couldn’t be all his own?

“I’m right here. Stop yelling.”

The voice was deep and awfully quiet, but it was way too loud, all the same. Everything ached, even listening, and Joe had to fight off the temptation to close his eyes and let himself slide back into that darkness. He started to do just that, but then he felt a hand on his arm squeezing hard. Joe tried pulling away from it, but then he understood that it was Adam, holding on and trying to get a better look at him. The pain was still towing him down, but Adam wasn’t letting him go.

“Damn it! Stop fighting me, Joe,”

Adam was shaking him. Joe could tell by his brother’s voice that something was wrong, but he couldn’t remember how to ask what it was. “Don’t yell. We don’t know if they’re still around.”

“I don’t understand.” Joe really didn’t understand, because all of a sudden, he was crying. There was blood all over Adam’s face, and he looked sick and pale. “I think we got hurt. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“I know,” Adam said and let go of his arm. “You’re right that we’re hurt, but we need to get out of here. I need you to sit up very slowly. My arm’s not working real well right now, so I can’t help you much.”

Joe tried to sit up, but realized too late it really wasn’t a good idea, and instead he leaned away from Adam and retched until his stomach was empty.

“Better?” Adam asked when it was over.

“I think so,” Joe answered and he did feel a little better, even though he could hardly get his mind around what was happening. His back was wet. His hands were cold. He was hurting all over, but the pain wasn’t as bad as it should have been for all the blood that was all over him. They were both covered in blood. He didn’t know where the hell he was, but the world smelled like pitch and wet cedar and copper. “Something’s wrong with my leg.”

“I can’t get the bullet out,” Adam told him apologetically like they were discussing a problem with the branding. “The bullet’s wedged against the bone above your knee, and it’s still bleeding.”

Joe tried to get a better look. Adam had tied it with some kind of a makeshift tourniquet, but blood was seeping out along the edges. It felt like the leg belonged to someone else. The whole situation felt like it belonged to someone else, seeing as he had no memory of how either of them got into it. Almost absent mindedly, Joe wondered if he was dying.

“How’d I get shot?” Joe felt his stomach turn sour again and tried to focus on his older brother. Blood was still trickling down the side of Adam’s face, and his hair was dark and tacky with it. “What happened? Something happened to you…”

“You were shot in the leg.” Adam actually looked worried. Joe closed his eyes, not wanting to see his brother not knowing what to do. Adam always knew what to do. He was Adam. “You came down hard off your horse. Hit your head. I took a bullet above my elbow. Passed all the way through, but it’s still bleeding. I think another bullet grazed above my ear – Joe – wake up! You can’t go back to sleep right now.”

But Joe was dreaming. He was dreaming of riding home, coming up a steep hill thickly wooded with pines. His pinto carried him over fallen timber, as he weaved between the trees. At the crest of the hill, he could see over the treetops all the way to the lake. The sunlight glistened over it – gold and red, jewels over the dark water. He’d seen that sight nearly every day of his life, and it wasn’t enough. Seventeen years was not enough. But the sun was shining, warm on his face. Then he saw her. Charlotte. It was a beautiful day, and they were going to be together. Nobody wanted them to be together. Not her father, not her brothers. Probably not Joe’s pa or brothers. Even before they found them in the barn together that afternoon, everyone said they were too young, that they couldn’t possibly know enough about love. After that day, they wouldn’t let him see her any more. He didn’t care. Joe was riding towards her on a brilliant, sunny day. He would take any chance for this. He wasn’t turning back. Joe couldn’t remember how long it would take to make it home anyway…

“Damn it, Joe. Wake up!”

Adam was shaking him, and he was angry. Joe didn’t want to leave the dream yet, but he knew enough to wake up when Adam told him to. It was one of the worst things about being the youngest, and he tried to wake himself up enough to tell his big brother to go away and leave him alone. He’d have given anything to have gone back to the dream, the lake, the trees. Charlotte. He missed her so much, it hurt more than his leg. If Adam had ever been in love like that, then surely he would understand.

Joe wanted to talk about Charlotte to his brother, but instead he said, “I want to go to the lake.”

“Well, at least that would be productive,” Adam said and actually smiled. “Okay, little brother, you’ve got a deal. When we get out of this mess, we can go fishing at the lake..”

“My horse… Cochise?”

“They took the horses.” Adam sounded calm but Joe knew better. “Took our rifles, our guns. Everything. They only left you and me.”

Joe felt his brother’s anger seep into his own heart. Like their blood, he couldn’t tell where Adam’s left off and his began.

“Not very smart of them to leave us alive,” Joe bit out. “Take a man’s horse, you best kill the man too, if you plan to stay alive for long.”

“Don’t worry,” Adam said. “If we don’t find them, they’ll get what they deserve. Justice works itself out.”

“I want to be the one to see to it,” Joe said, stubbornly.

“Last I heard, the only thing you wanted was to get back to Charlotte,” Adam said, “If we’re going to manage that, I need you to get up. I can only support you on this arm. You’re going to have to find a way to walk.”

“I can walk,” Joe said and tried it, although standing alone was damn near impossible. The ground was pitching under his feet like a recalcitrant bronc.

“Prove it,” Adam replied, the most predictable big brother taunt in the book, but it got under Joe’s skin anyway. Somehow, with Adam taking most of Joe’s weight on his uninjured arm, they struggled to get up and moving.

They managed for a while, both of them stumbling and slipping on the swampy needles and leaves. Twice, Joe pitched forward. The second time, he didn’t get up. He could smell the warm earth under the wet leaves. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get up again, and he closed his eyes and slept. This time, Adam didn’t wake him, and when he finally woke up, Joe realized that his brother was lying next to him. Adam’s eyes were closed. For the life of him, Joe couldn’t remember why they were sleeping in the middle of the forest while the sun was in the sky.

“Adam?”

Joe could feel fever rising in his own body and even worse, he was sure that Adam was feverish as well. Adam wasn’t waking up, and Joe tried to remember what to do. Then he remembered about Adam’s arm. Adam said he’d been shot too. Joe fumbled with Adam’s sleeve with fingers that were numb and awkward. He couldn’t push the material up high enough to see the wound, so finally he just tore it along the hem, smiling ruefully when he remembered teasing Adam for buying such a fancy shirt for ranch work.

Finally, Joe found the wound but was having trouble understanding what he was seeing. It wasn’t good. That much he knew for sure. The bullet had gone through, but it was red and festering. Infection was setting in already, and Adam hadn’t done a good job of cleaning it out already.

“Damn,” Joe muttered and looked around. The sun was beyond the tree line. “Good riddance,” he muttered, glad that that the light wasn’t so bright anymore. Then it occurred to him that the sun going down was bad news by any fool’s reckoning.

Joe stood. He didn’t know what to do or even what he was looking for. Water. He needed water to wash off his brother’s wound and his own. If they’d passed by any creeks for the past stumbling mile, he honestly couldn’t remember. Scanning the terrain, he saw that it was greener downhill, and the undergrowth was more lush. Water was likely nearby, but Joe didn’t want to leave his brother.

“God, Adam, wake up,” he moaned, unsure what he would do if his brother didn’t. He would have prayed, but then he remembered Charlotte and hesitated. He wasn’t sure he had a right to be asking any favors from God. Joe was no saint, but the pain was taunting him to do something. Anything. He was running out of time. Joe’s memory wasn’t working right, but he could remember some things just fine. Although he couldn’t remember waking up that morning, he could remember poor Widow Fleming dying of blood poisoning last spring. She’d gashed her arm on an iron latch while going out to milk her cow. Widow Fleming been too busy to see to her wound then and too busy to see to it later. By the time she found time to see to the wound, it was raw and festering and too late. She died before the doctor had time to make it to her place.

Joe wasn’t about to let that happen to his brother, but Adam hadn’t moved a muscle, and he was running out of time. God, wake up, he thought again, but didn’t have the strength to say it. Joe took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He needed to prioritize. He needed to think like Adam.

Before Joe could tend to Adam, he knew he had to do something about himself. Without taking care of his own wound, he wouldn’t be of use to either one of them. Gracelessly, he plopped himself on the ground. Biting his lip so hard it drew blood, Joe tore at his pants so he could get a better look at the puckered hole where the bullet had entered. It had stopped bleeding, a ridiculously small blessing in light of everything else. Joe tore at a seam and probed the open wound disinterestedly. It was almost numb, but it was an ugly wound, red along the ragged edges. If it wasn’t as bad as Adam’s arm, it would be soon, and Joe tried to remember what would happen next. Fever. He already had some fever, and then he remembered that Adam did too. Furiously, he rubbed his eyes trying to rub some sense into his addled mind. For a moment, he wanted to give up. He could lay down alongside Adam and call it a day. It would be that easy.

But there was something on the ground beside him. Joe looked down to find a flask next to his leg. It must have fallen out of his pocket. He didn’t remember putting it there, but then again, he didn’t remember much of anything. Twisting the top, he took a whiff of it and smiled. Pure rye whiskey and just what he needed, although not in the way he’d apparently been thinking when packing for the trip. Clenching his teeth, Joe trickled a steady stream over the wound on his leg until he was sure it was soaked through. He then poured a small puddle into his hand and splashed it against the wound at the back of his head. For several minutes, he braced himself, breathing hard through the pain. But he wasn’t finished. He needed to see to Adam. Crouching beside his unconscious brother, Joe resisted the urge to shake him. Adam’s color was all wrong, flushed and at the same time, pale.

“Sorry, brother,” he whispered and unceremoniously emptied the rest of the his flask on Adam’s forearm.

It did the trick.

Joe didn’t know half the words that his oldest brother seemed to have picked up along the way, but Adam was up and letting loose with a stream of words that would make a miner blush. If Joe hadn’t been already been halfway to death on his own, he figured Adam might be ready to kill him. But Adam was settling down, holding his arm up like he’d like to get rid of it, and the color was back in his face. That had to be a good thing, Joe reckoned.

Finally, Adam bit out the words, “Could you have asked me first?”

“I tried,” Joe said. “You weren’t much for listening.”

“Where are we?” Adam asked. “How long was I out?”

“Too long.” Joe gestured at the redden hue of the sky. “Gonna be dark soon.”

“We need to build a fire,” Adam muttered. “I need to get that bullet out of your leg. God, Joe… what did you pour on me? It feels like you stuck my arm in a forge. And what were you doing with that stuff, anyway?”

“I don’t remember,” Joe admitted quietly. “Adam, I’m not even sure why we’re out here.”

“We were bushwhacked,” Adam said, bluntly. “They took everything. Left the two of us for dead. That’s about it.”

“That’s what I figured,” Joe said, gingerly lying down on the hard ground. “Just seemed like there was more.” After a while, he added, “Adam, you’re going to have get this bullet out of my leg.”

“Doc Martin will do it when we get back to town,” Adam replied. “Joe, they took everything. I don’t even have a knife.”

They were quiet for a while, and finally Joe asked, “Adam, why are we out here? What were we doing when they bushwhacked us, anyway?”

Surprised, Adam looked over at him. “You don’t remember?”

Joe shook his head and said, “I remember Hoss walking into the barn door headfirst and almost knocking himself out. That’s about it.”

“That was last week,” Adam said, smiling. Joe smiled at it too. If he had to have a broken memory, then it got stuck at a funny moment. “You must have hit your head hard.”

“I reckon,” Joe said.

He looked at the sky, clouds chasing each other over the feathertips of the pines. Joe felt curiously removed from it. He felt like he could close his eyes and dream it all away. He wished he’d saved more of that whiskey. He didn’t remember sticking it in his pocket, but wished he’d have had the foresight to bring more. His head hurt. His leg hurt. His mind hurt, just trying to cast it back far enough. Joe felt like there was more. Something he was forgetting, but he couldn’t get at it. Then, he remembered.

“Pa was mad at me,” Joe said, sure that he was right. “Is that why I brought the whiskey?”

Adam nodded. “He was definitely mad at you. Don’t know if that’s why you brought the whiskey. You were pretty upset yourself. Don’t worry though. Getting shot covers a multitude of sins. Pa’ll forgive you once he gets a look at that leg. I’m not so sure about Charlotte’s father, however.”

“Well, that makes me feel better,” Joe grumbled and sat up again, picking up and hurtling a rock at a tree. A chickadee fluttered to safety when it bounced off the branch it had been perched on. “What is that even supposed to mean, Adam?”

“Forget it,” Adam said. “Pa will forgive you, like he always does.”

Finally, Joe said, “This is about Charlotte, isn’t it? About what happened with Charlotte?”

Wearily, Adam replied, “Yes, it’s about what happened with you and Charlotte. Now can you please shut up, so I can do some thinking?”

Joe could feel it coming back to him. That afternoon in the barn. His father as angry as Joe had ever seen him. Everyone had been talking about what to do about “the situation.” He couldn’t remember what they’d decided. However, Joe couldn’t even think enough to make any sense of it. He lay back down, this time for good. His eyes hurt from the inside out, and his vision was starting to go blurry.

“You got to get the bullet out,” he whispered. “I ain’t got long, Adam, and I have to see her again.”

“Fever’s rising,” Adam said, as much to himself as to his brother. “Joe, I already told you. We don’t have a knife. I don’t know how to get the bullet out without a knife.”

Joe managed to say, “Then it’s a good thing that you’re the smart one,” before he closed his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

**********


Bushwhackers. In his dream, Joe could remember that there were bushwhackers. He remembered the bullets flying through the air. Adam was yelling his name and knocking him off his horse and over, and they were both rolling on the ground. Both shot, and there was blood everywhere. Everywhere. The men were laughing. There were four of them, and they were spitting tobacco onto the ground in front of Joe’s face. He tried to roll away from it, get up. Fight back. But Adam was holding onto him. Wouldn’t let go, even though there was something wrong with Adam. Joe tried to ask what was wrong, but Adam cupped his hand over his mouth. Wanted him to stay quiet. The men were leaving. There was something wrong with Joe’s leg. Joe couldn’t figure out what it was. Blood in his mouth. Blood in his hair, stinging his eyes. Adam had a hold of him. He could hear the rattle in Adam’s chest. Oh God, oh God, it hurt. It hurt, and they could be dying. Then there was stillness. And darkness. And someone was crying…

“Joe wake up!”

Adam sounded irritated. Joe knew better than to ignore that voice, coming from his oldest brother. He opened his eyes, albeit reluctantly. It was dark, really dark, although there were flames flickering around them. To his surprise, he realized Adam wasn’t upset at all.

“We did it, little brother,” he said and grinned. “The sun’s gone down, and the two of us are alive to tell the tale.”

Joe tried moving his head but gave up, when the stars over his head swarmed together like a mass of drunken fireflies.

“What did you do?” Joe whispered.

“Took it out,” Adam said, prodding the fire.

“How’d you do it?” Joe’s tongue felt like gauze in his dry mouth. “No knife…”

“Don’t ask,” Adam said, suddenly very serious, and Joe knew that he meant it. Whatever it had taken to get that bullet out cost Adam a lot, and Joe knew enough to leave it alone.

“Why are we here?” Joe asked again, but this time Adam softened at the question.

“You really don’t know?”

Joe shook his head, which hurt, so he studied the swarming stars instead and held still.

“Do you remember what happened with Charlotte?”

Of course, Joe remembered Charlotte. He remembered her and carried her with him everywhere he went. She was the most important part of himself, the part that never got left behind.

He started to push himself up. “Is she all right?” Joe asked.

“She’s fine,” Adam replied smoothly. Even from where he was lying, Joe could see the sheen of sweat over his brother’s face. Adam was also hurting bad. Joe wondered if he’d tended to himself after taking care of that bullet. “She’s with her father and her brothers on her ranch.”

“Is she angry with me?”

“That’s something you would know, Joe, rather than me. You haven’t exactly been forthcoming, lately.”

Joe rolled away from his frustrating older brother who was always saying something without saying anything at all. He closed his eyes. Joe could see Charlotte’s face, as he always could, every day since he’d been in love with her. He’d known her all of his life. They’d grown up together, but Lord Almighty, Charlotte Bradshaw was a beauty at sixteen. She’d been a beauty at thirteen and fourteen and fifteen as well but too young for him, despite the fact he was only a year older. And yet everyone kept telling them that they were too young. They were old enough for love and all its distractions, but too young to get married. That’s what everyone said. Joe remembered the first time he kissed her, and then he didn’t feel all that young at all…

Joe had started to believe that the new reverend would never stop preaching. During the service, Joe sat behind her. He couldn’t think of anything but the color of her hair, golden with tinted light coming through the stained glass window. She had to know he was watching her. He couldn’t wait any longer. Everyone was always saying the same thing. “Wait, wait, wait.” Joe had to be alone with her. She was the one for him, and if she didn’t know better, it was high time that he made that clear. He had her attention before she made it to the end of the pew. She’d been pretending she didn’t notice him, but with him grinning saucily like that, she couldn’t help but laugh behind her hand and give him a small nod.

They left behind the hand-shaking and the chatter and slipped behind the chapel. Joe barely made it to the edge of the rose hedge when he took hold of her shoulders and kissed her for longer than he dared.

“Presumptuous!” Charlotte chastised him. “We’re at church, Little Joe Cartwright!”

She’d slapped him hard when he leaned in for a second kiss. but not hard enough. She took in a quick breath when he didn’t back off, and he knew that any pain was worth it.

Charlotte looked him up and down. “Well, I suppose this makes me presumptuous too,” she said at last, leaning in, and this time, she kissed him.

“Did Pa send me away because of Charlotte?” Joe asked suddenly, rolling over and staring at his brother. Things had moved along so quickly after that beautiful Sunday afternoon. They had spent every free moment together, until the afternoon that Charlotte’s family found them together…

Adam sighed. “Glad your memory’s coming back. You better believe Pa sent you away before Charlotte’s father and four older brothers had a chance to send you away permanently. If Pa hadn’t been old friends with Ned Bradshaw, I expect they’d have horsewhipped you right there and then. Either that or killed you. Honestly Joe, I’d have thought you’d have more common sense than that. Or at least a little discretion. They caught the two of you together in her barn. What were you thinking?”

Joe’s memory was definitely coming back. “I thought we were alone.”

“You’re never alone. You, of all people, should know that. Cartwrights are never alone. There will always be plenty of people watching and waiting for any one of us to slip up. One of the hands saw you and went and got her brothers. I’d say you obliged in slipping up very nicely, Joe, let alone providing fodder for the gossips for the next decade.” Then, Adam turned dead serious. “They expect you to marry her, Joe.”

Joe said with sudden dignity, “I was going to marry her all along. Nobody has to order me to do it.”

Adam replied, gently this time, “Let’s just drop it, for now. You can talk it over with Pa and her father when we get back.”

“If we get back,” Joe said, and he could feel the pain in his leg, dragging him down with it. “I’ve got to get back. I love her, Adam.”

“She’s sixteen, for God’s sake. What the hell were you thinking, Joe? You’re seventeen. What do either of you know about being in love?”

“She’s the one,” Joe repeated, dully, and then turned to his brother. For the first time, he felt real fear, competing with pain in his belly. “Adam, if I die, who’ll look after her? Pa should have let me marry her. He shouldn’t have sent me away.”

“You’re not going to die,” Adam insisted, punching him softly on his arm. “You’re going to be fine! I got the bullet out. You can go back and marry Charlotte Bradshaw and have a passel of kids together. Now, stop insulting surgical skills and go back to sleep, will you? I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Why did you come along?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you come along?” Joe repeated. “Pa wanted me out of the way. How’d you end up with the short stick of keepin’ me away from Mr. Bradshaw’s shotgun?”

“Doesn’t look like I did a great job of keeping you away from shotguns,” Adam said, grimacing as he lay down next to Joe as close to the fire as he could get without being singed. “We have business to take care of, believe it or not. The cattle buyer in Hangtown didn’t want to go with the price Pa specified in the contract. I’m supposed to make sure we get what’s owed us. I suppose you were coming along to ‘help’.”

“We didn’t make it to Hangtown?” Joe asked. He could only imagine how much “help” he must have been after being separated from Charlotte.

“No,” Adam said. Suddenly, his voice sounded very, very tired. “We’re not even close to Hangtown. We had just gotten started when they ambushed us.”

“Then, Pa will know something is wrong.” Joe believed in his father and would stake his life on him, but he was feeling kind of funny. The stars were blurring in the sky, but it didn’t matter as much as before. He couldn’t even hold on to his last memory of Charlotte, and he was too tired to care. “They’ll wire him when we don’t show up to close the deal. He’ll come and get us,” Joe whispered.

“Sure he will,” Adam said but didn’t sound sure at all.

Joe felt himself shivering inside and out. He hoped Adam didn’t notice, but when he looked over, he realized his brother was already asleep. He reached out, felt Adam’s forehead, and could feel the fever rising almost as high as his own. Their situation was bad, real bad, and he had no idea what to do about. Joe could feel his own illness tugging at him, insistent and bad-mannered, and he didn’t have the strength to fight back.

“Oh, God, please help us,” he prayed and scooted closer to Adam until their shoulders were touching. He wasn’t going to get any warmer, and Joe wondered if it was the last time he would ever see the stars. He tried to get a real good look while he still could, before he closed his eyes.

**********

When Joe woke up, he could feel twigs and pebbles etching patterns onto his cheek. He could smell the earth, and oddly, he could smell Adam. He didn’t have to turn around to know that his brother was still lying next to him. Joe could hear him breathing. They had made it through the night. They were alive.

If Joe had ever felt worse, he couldn’t remember. The numbness of the previous day was gone, replaced by crushing pain that made him want to give up again. He could hear the sounds of the forest and knew what they meant. Only a fool would believe they were all alone. Predators circled all around. The bushwhackers who’d attacked them were only the first of many waiting their turn. It was the way it worked. The strong devoured the weak. Life fed on death. Joe might be Charlotte’s beloved, but he was carrion to any self-respecting vulture.

“Won’t be much left to bury,” he muttered to himself, wondering if there would be a grave for Charlotte to visit.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Joe rolled over, and Adam was sitting up next to him. He had to smile. Adam had pine needles in his hair. In the gray light of morning, Joe got his first good look at this brother. Dried blood still clung in flecks to the side of his face. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, like someone who’d been sleeping off a good time.

“I’m talking about vultures,” Joe said, trying to sit up alongside his brother. “Adam, we’re not going to get out of this, are we?”

“Of course we are,” Adam said. “We need to get back to the main road. Someone will come along in time.”

“In time,” Joe echoed. “How much time do you think we have?”

He was out of time and knew it. Joe was beginning to remember. Pa had ordered him on the trip with Adam, and he’d snuck off to the Bradshaw ranch to tell her he was leaving for a while.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” she’d warned him. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t care what any of them had to say.”

Why did he leave her? Because his pa ordered him to, and most of the time, Joe did what his pa told him. He wasn’t all that brave.

Adam was talking to himself. By the way he was holding his arm, Joe knew he had to be hurting. It wasn’t like Adam to admit it. Pain was something to be dealt with, not shared.

“We need to get water,” Adam was saying. “If we don’t get water, we won’t make it to the road to get help. The river has to be close by. Too much undergrowth for it to be otherwise. My arm’s not better but it’s not worse. The bullet came out clean. We’ve got a chance. There’s got to be a way. There has got to be a way. I just have to think clearly.”

“Soliloquy,” Joe said suddenly smiling. “That’s what it’s called.”

Adam looked startled. “Excuse me?”

“You’re having a soliloquy. Saying your thoughts out loud. Isn’t that what it’s called?”

“Lie down, Joe. You look like you’re going to throw up again. Yes, that’s what a soliloquy is, and thank you very much for listening to one thing I taught you, but we’re not in a play. I’m trying to come up with a plan.”

“Let me help,” Joe said quietly. “It’s my fault we’re out here in the first place.”

“It’s not your fault we were bushwhacked,” Adam said softly, “and it’s not your fault that you were shot. I need to think clearly, but I’m having a little trouble. That’s all.”

Joe’s thinking was also tangled up. He couldn’t keep his mind on what lay ahead. Above them, a flock of geese was angling back toward the lake, a brief sojourn before winter. It was amazing how far the honking carried over the sound of the wind through the trees. They were running out of time. He thought about Charlotte’s pink cheeks on the last day they’d gone riding together. It was the last afternoon they’d spent together, but neither of them knew that then. They were chapped from the wind, but neither could bring themselves to mind.

“Are you tired of me?” she’d asked, teasing him.

“Never,” he’d replied, and he’d caught her hand with his and held it. “I’ll never be tired of you.”

“Never is a long time,” she’d quietly replied but he’d gathered her up then, bringing her close, and they’d lost their balance and almost fallen into the stream, holding each other and laughing. He kissed her again and again, and they led the horses back to the barn. They weren’t in a hurry. They had so much time. Her father and brothers weren’t supposed to be back for hours…

“Time,” Joe said out loud. “She and I haven’t had enough time yet. You were right, Adam, I should have known better. I don’t know if she’ll forgive me if I die. I think I’ve got to stay alive for her.”

“There’s never enough time,” Adam said quietly, frowning and checking Joe’s forehead. “You’re awfully warm. How does that leg feel?”

While Adam checked his wound, Joe studied his older brother. There was so much he didn’t know about Adam. It was a strange thing, but Joe honestly couldn’t remember his brother falling in love. Adam had been with various girls to be sure, courted them for a while, and then let them go. It seemed like it was awfully easy for Adam to let them go.

All except the one. There was one girl they all knew about, but none of them knew her name. She was different. Joe knew she was different from the stack of letters Adam kept in his desk. Once a month, he sat down and wrote her another, but he never mailed any of them, not even once. Whoever she was, she’d done plenty of damage.

“What was she like?” Joe asked, before he realized he’d asked it out loud.

“For God’s sake, Joe,” Adam griped. “Hold still. I’m trying to check your leg. What was ‘who’ like? Lie back down, will you?”

Joe complied, not really feeling up for sitting anyway. There were certain things they never talked about. Everyone knew the rules, even though they never spelled them out. But if they were going to die anyway…

“We all know about her,” Joe said, bravely plunging forward. “You write her letters but never send them.”

“Could there be a more inappropriate time to discuss my personal affairs?” Adam snapped, and he tied the bandage a little tighter than he needed to.

But Joe’s fever was giving him plenty of courage. “Why won’t you talk about her, Adam? What was her name?”

“Leave it.” Adam said it like he meant it. “You have to take the good with the bad, Joe. There’s no changing what’s past, and there’s no use talking about it.”

“Sounds familiar. Take the bitter with the sweet,” Joe said. “That’s what Pa says.”

“Well, Pa’s right,” Adam said, wryly. “Pa is usually right.”

“Except when he’s wrong.”

“Except when he’s wrong,” Adam echoed.

“There’ll be hell to pay if we die, Adam.”

“Then, let’s not die,” Adam replied with an unexpected smile, tossing Joe’s hat at him.

For what it was worth, Joe could live with that.

**********

Their saving grace was that they were too bad off to know how much trouble they were in.

For hours, they tramped through the forest, continuously losing their footing as they plodded painfully along. If they’d stopped at all, they’d never have kept going. It was slow and absurdly painful going. Joe’s leg was an albatross that he had to drag along while hanging on to Adam’s good arm. Adam wasn’t doing much better. Joe knew it by the way his breathing was coming out ragged and uneven. They were running out of time, and Joe doubted they’d make it through another night without shelter. However, he put Charlotte in front of him and forced himself into moving toward her. She would never forgive him for dying. His pa had wanted them to have time apart to let things settle down, as he put it. Joe never should have left her, not matter what his pa wanted him to do.

He was thinking of Charlotte, when they came upon their horses, grazing in a clearing. It was such an unexpected sight that at first, Joe thought he had finally gone delirious, and he let go of Adam’s arm and immediately collapsed to the ground. For a minute, he just lay there, trying to get his wits about him. Yet, when he lifted his head, the horses were still there, and Adam was standing between them, stroking his gelding’s mane.

“I don’t understand,” Joe said.

“Neither do I,” Adam said. “I don’t know why horse thieves would leave them behind. Saddlebags are empty, and our rifles are gone. But, Joe, this could make all the difference.”

The way Joe was feeling, he wasn’t sure anything was going to make a difference.

“I need you to mount, Joe,” Adam said to him, when he didn’t answer. “I need you up on your horse. I’ll lead you, but you need to stay in the saddle.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Joe confessed, putting his head back down. “This might be it for me, Adam.”

“You can,” Adam insisted, frowning at him. “You could have one foot in the grave and still sit a horse.”

As it turned out, Joe managed to mount, though he felt like he was a lifetime away from his preferred method of swinging into the saddle. He took it minute by minute but managed to stay upright, letting his horse do the work of following Adam further down the trail. Honestly, Joe didn’t know how Adam was doing it either, but his big brother was holding his reins loose and slack, like things were going exactly as he’d expected. It was something that Joe envied in Adam, although he’d never admit it. Whatever Adam did, he made it look easy.

It wasn’t long before they came upon four unfamiliar horses wandering through the pines. Adam dismounted with some difficulty, approached calmly, and ran his hand along the flanks of a stocky bay.

“She’s been running hard,” he said.

“Those bandits have to be around,” Joe said, wildly looking around. He wasn’t one to be easily spooked. He’d grown up in these mountains, and knew his way around as well as any man. However, he shuddered at the possibility that a bandit had him in the sight of his own stolen rifle.

Adam noticed and said, “Don’t worry, buddy. I think things are finally going our way.”

“I don’t know about that,” Joe said, “but I sure do wish I didn’t use up all my whiskey on your arm.”

Adam laughed. “Amen to that,” he said. “I’d just about turn to bushwhacking myself for a swig of cheap whiskey right now.”

The uncharacteristic comment made Joe laugh too, but then he turned his head too fast and had to hold on to the pinto’s neck, as pain almost took him out of the saddle. Then he saw it on the ground – the crook of an arm lying in the mass of ferns and brambles. A head lying at the wrong angle. One body and then another and another. Another. They were all there, the four men lying there, dead in the forest.

“Stay where you are,” Adam ordered and cautiously went to investigate.

Like he needed to be told. Joe stayed right where he was. He knew full well if he got off his horse, he likely wouldn’t be able to get up again.

Adam came back, his expression grim. The death of any man – no matter how repugnant or immoral that man – was not a matter for celebration. They’d been taught that from childhood, and they’d learned the lesson well.

“Indians,” Adam said. “Paiutes, by the type of arrow shafts. It looks to me like it happened last night. They had our rifles. They used up most of our ammunition trying to defend themselves, but they were probably outnumbered.”

“Paiutes?” Joe asked wearily. “We haven’t had trouble from the Paiutes since Pa signed the treaty with – ”

“We haven’t had trouble,” Adam interrupted, “because we haven’t been foolish enough to go raiding Paiute camps. Their saddlebags were full of furs and beads. Obviously, we weren’t the only ones they stole from.”

“Why did the Paiutes leave the horses behind?”‘

“I don’t know.” Adam sighed. “Maybe the horses scattered, maybe they weren’t sure they’d killed all of them. Maybe they decided it would be bad luck to take them. We don’t have to know the reason for everything, Joe.”

“Everything has a reason,” Joe said but wasn’t sure why it mattered. He was feeling very, very tired. Joe leaned forward and rested his head against his own pinto’s mane, inhaling the familiar smell of musk and dust and long rides in the sun. He longed to go riding with Charlotte again. But Joe was beginning to fade away.

Adam was standing over the bodies of the four men and seemed so sad and already distant. There was so much Joe didn’t know about his oldest brother. Like the letters in that desk, he kept it all stored inside. They’d had so little time, and a breeze was kicking up from the north. It blew off his hat, chilling him to the bone, and he shivered violently. Like someone walking over my grave. That’s what Hoss always said. Joe closed his eyes. Charlotte was right. Joe should have stood up to his own father. He shouldn’t have agreed to go; he should have stayed by her side. He hoped Charlotte wouldn’t waste her life writing letters to the dead. Life was too short for that kind of regret. If he made it home, he’d make sure she knew it.

Joe had reached the end of the line. Adam turned and saw him just as he was falling. Joe wished they had more time. The last word Joe said wasn’t her name. It was his brother’s.

**********

They were talking around him in low, hushed voices, which meant he was alive and not dead. That was the first surprise. The next surprise was that he was dry and warm and considerably comfortable. His body hurt like the devil, but that wasn’t unexpected. Joe had forgotten it was possible to feel any different.

“Well, it’s about time you decided to join us, young man.”

The voice was familiar and as welcome as any he’d heard before, and it made Joe blink hard to focus. Dust was swirling around the room in streams of sunlight, but he was lying in his own bed, and his father was sitting by his side.

“Pa?” he asked. curiously, and his pa smiled. “I’m alive?”

“Of course you’re alive,” Ben said, keeping his voice low and gentle. But he smiled and added, “That’s enough talking now. Waking up is enough for today. How about a drink of water, boy?”

Joe took the glass and drank deeply. His throat was so dry he could hardly swallow, and immediately, he felt better. When he reached to put it on the table, he noticed Hoss and Adam for the first time, sitting on the other side of his bed. They looked like they’d been holding their breath and needed to come up for air.

“Hey brothers,” Joe said, grinning. He was shamelessly glad to see them. Noticing Adam’s heavily bandaged arm and forehead, he asked in a more solemn voice, “Are you all right, Adam? You look awful.”

“Thanks a lot,” Adam said smiling dryly. “I’ll live. And so will you, or so the doctor tells us.”

Hoss seemed to finally find his voice, but when he spoke it was oddly thick. He pounded on Joe’s shoulder affectionately. “Little brother, we’d just about given you up for dead. You gave us a scare, that’s for dang sure.”

“That’s enough, Hoss,” Ben said and placed a hand on his large son’s knee. “Stop bouncing your brother. You’re going to start him bleeding again. Son, do you remember any of what happened? Adam said you lost some of your memory earlier.”

Joe shook his head, although some of it was coming back to him. The bodies on the ground, the nervous horses, the smell of blood in the forest. He remembered the look on Adam’s face before he lost consciousness. He should have died.

“You owe your life to your brother,” Ben continued as if he could read Joe’s thoughts, while smiling affectionately at Adam. “He brought you home. You’d have never made it if it weren’t for him.”

Hoss grinned, happily. “It’s a good thing older brother here’s so hard-headed for all the grief you give him about it, Shortshanks. I don’t know how Adam did it. He rode with you in front of him all the way home. And he was wounded at that.”

Joe looked curiously at Adam but couldn’t read his expression. “Adam?” he started to question, but Adam cut him off.

“It wasn’t easy. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. That pretty girl of yours had better be worth the trouble it was to haul your sorry hide home.”

Hoss laughed, and Joe remembered what he had been forgetting. He was in love.

“Is Charlotte – ?” he started to ask, but his father was getting ready to leave the room.

“Miss Bradshaw would like to see you,” Ben said, patting his son on the shoulder, his usual way of ending a conversation. “That is actually an understatement. I should say instead that she’s bound and determined to see you. We can talk about the situation when you’re stronger, Son. I’ll bring you something to eat, and then you need to rest.”

“I’m not leaving her again, Pa.”

Wherever the conviction to stand up to his father came from, it took both of them by surprise. Suddenly, Joe was determined. Second chances weren’t something to take lightly.

He repeated, fiercer this time, “I’m not leaving her. I’m going to marry her, Pa. I won’t live my life without Charlotte.”

Ben opened his mouth as if to argue but apparently thought better of it. Finally, he said. “Joseph, I don’t want you to get trapped in a mistake that we can’t get you out of.”

“But it’s my life,” Joe protested. “It’s my life to mess up how I want to.”

It wasn’t the way he meant for it to come out, but his declaration made his family laugh anyway. As it turned out, Adam had been right when he said that Joe’s leg would probably make his father forget how angry he was before Joe had left.

Ben patted Joe’s shoulder before turning away. “We’ll work this out later, Joseph.”

We’ll work it out now, Joe was ready to proclaim, but his father had already left, with Hoss sneaking a grin at his little brother before he followed out the door. Only Adam stayed behind, regarding Joe with an unreadable expression.

“Thanks for bringing me home, Adam,” Joe said sincerely, but Adam waved off the thanks.

“Pa’d never have let me hear the end of it if I came home without you,” he said, and Joe rolled his eyes.

They were quiet for a while, until Joe could feel himself drifting off again. He was awfully tired, even though it seemed like there was something he should be staying awake for.

Joe was almost asleep when Adam suddenly said, “Her name was Jane. Jane Downing.”

Joe jarred himself awake and stared hard at his older brother. “She’s the one you write the letters to?” he asked quietly.

Adam continued as if his brother hadn’t spoken, “I knew her in Boston. She was younger than me, but not by much. She was very intelligent and… she loved poetry, theatre. Jane was passionate about classical Greek literature.” He smiled at Joe. “Everything I ever wanted in a woman. I honestly thought we were going to spend our lives together. I thought we had all the time in the world. She was a genuine blue-blood with ancestors dating back to the Mayflower. I wasn’t good enough for her. But for some reason, she loved me anyway. I never told Pa about her. I was going to surprise all of you. I planned to come home from Boston, a married man.”

Joe watched Adam, even as his brother stared out the window at memories only he could see. He was the most stubborn man Joe had ever known. Once his mind was made up, nothing could get in Adam’s way. Right then and there, Joe was finally sure why Adam never came home a married man. Softly, he asked, “How did she die?”

“A fever was spreading through Boston that summer,” Adam said, running his hand along the window pane. “We should have left while we still could, but we wanted to get married before leaving the city. I honestly can’t explain it now, but we were sure we had enough time. You make foolish decisions when you’re young and in love.”

“Was she beautiful?” Joe asked. He could imagine Charlotte’s lovely brown eyes, her curls like shimmering wheat on a sunny day. However, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose her. A world without Charlotte in it was too much to think about. Joe couldn’t imagine ever being able to fall in love again.

Adam studied him and after a moment’s hesitation, smacked his brother amiably on his good leg. “You’ve never seen beautiful before, little brother.”

“I’ve seen beautiful,” Joe retorted with a grin, but then had to ask, “After all this time, why did you decide to tell me about her?”

Adam was quiet, and Joe could tell he was thinking it over. Finally he shrugged and admitted, “I promised you I’d tell you.”

“When did you promise me that?”

“On the ride back. You weren’t doing very well, and I guess I was desperate. So I promised you I’d tell you about Jane if you lived long enough to make it home. You’ve always been so damned stubborn, I knew you’d hold on just to hold me to my promise.”

“But I don’t remember you promising me that,” Joe maintained.

“There’s a lot you don’t remember,” Adam said, which was true enough. There was much he didn’t remember – the bushwhackers, the gunfight and getting shot, the missing time during which Adam had somehow managed to bring him home.

Suddenly, Joe thought about the bullet that had gone through his brother’s arm and the one that had lodged in his own leg. A memory came back to him with perfect clarity… the crack of gunfire in the air, Adam throwing himself off his horse and knocking Joe onto the ground. The tangle of their bodies, their blood mixing together, the sound of laughter and running horses.

“The bullet that hit me…” Joe began. “Did it hit you first? Did you put yourself in front of that bullet for me?”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “If I put myself in front of a bullet, I did it for Pa’s sake. He was still pretty mad at you, and I didn’t want to deprive him of the chance to light into you again.”

With a grin, Joe tried to take a swing at him, but Adam smiled and ducked out of the way.

Before leaving, he turned and said, “Joe… if you love her, then make it work. No matter what Pa or anyone else says. Just do me a favor – let’s keep this between us.”

“Adam wait.” Joe would launched himself out of the bed if he could. “There’ll be someone else for you. I just know it.”

However, Adam was out the door so fast that Joe wasn’t even sure he’d heard him.

Joe didn’t fall asleep right away but spent some time staring into the empty corners of his room. Remembering that afternoon with Charlotte, he could feel her lips on his, could almost reach for the stray pieces of straw in her riotous hair, before her outraged father and brothers burst into the barn and dragged them apart. It was hardly a promising beginning, but in the long run, it wouldn’t matter how they got their start. Joe had always been as fearless in love as he was in any good fight. He was Little Joe Cartwright. It would all work out. He just knew it.

Then he thought of his oldest brother. Adam had thrown himself in front of a bullet for him. He’d brought him home, most likely almost killing himself in the process. Joe owed Adam his life, again and again. But it was what brothers did for each other. He’d have done the same if he’d had the chance.

Adam.

Joe sighed and looked out the window. His brother was absolutely brave in the face of death but not nearly as courageous in the face of life. Stacks of sealed letters were tied in neat bundles inside his desk. Letters to the dead. Lying in his own room, Joe prayed that when a second chance for love came around, Adam would be brave enough to throw himself in front of it. Take a chance like he took a bullet. Sometimes, it was all right to risk losing everything. Love heedlessly and live well.

That’s what Joe prayed for his brother.

The End

 

 

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

 

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Author: DBird

One of the most prolific of Bonanza fanfic writers, Dbird has 56 of her wonderful stories here in the Brand Library.

19 thoughts on “Between Brothers (by DBird)

  1. Angst and pain for both brothers, with their love for each other clearly shown. Your writing is amazing, with wonderful details.

  2. Stories with Adam and Joe are always a treat and this one delivered in spades. Adam’s backstory was so sad and I hope that Joe’s wish for him comes true after all they’ve been through together.

  3. You can’t beat a story full of JAM! I just love the image of Adam with pine needles in his hair.

  4. Wonderful story!! Excellent portrayal of the relationship between these two brothers. Love the interaction between them!

  5. He did it in order to give Pa one more chance to ‘light into him’! Poetically Adam; his own way of admitting that he really does care for his youngest brother.

  6. You’ve done a masterful job of writing suffering Joe and suffering Adam along with a touch of angst for Adam, but what shines the most is the love the brothers have for each other.

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